October 21, 2015 – ARLINGTON, VA – FMI President and CEO, Leslie G. Sarasin urged the Senate to join the House of Representatives and act this Fall to provide one uniform national food labeling standard following today’s Senate Agriculture Committee hearing.

Sarasin said, “FMI members sell a wide variety of foods throughout the United States and regularly hear from shoppers about food labeling issues. With regard to identifying non-GMO food products, retailers and the consumers they serve need one national standard for non-GMO containing food products to avoid the confusion and inefficiency of a state by state patchwork labeling system. We are already seeing, through the actions our members must consider in order to comply with the Vermont stand-alone law, that we cannot have a system of 50 different labeling approaches for these products. It would not be financially viable and it is incredibly confusing.

The House of Representatives passed its version of a uniform national standard for food labeling in July with strong bipartisan support. We applaud the Senate Agriculture Committee for holding this hearing and urge the Senate to also consider uniform food labeling legislation this Fall.”

Food Marketing Institute proudly advocates on behalf of the food retail industry, which employs nearly 5 million workers and represents a combined annual sales volume of almost $800 billion. FMI member companies operate nearly 33,000 retail food stores and 12,000 pharmacies. FMI membership includes the entire spectrum of food retail venues; single owner grocery stores, large multi-store supermarket chains, pharmacies, online and mixed retail stores. Through programs in public affairs, food safety, research, education, health and wellness and industry relations, FMI offers resources and provides valuable benefits to almost 1,000 ­­­food retail and wholesale member companies and serves 85 international retail member companies. In addition, FMI has almost 500 associate member companies that provide products and services to the food retail industry. For more information, visit www.fmi.org and for information regarding the FMI Foundation, visit www.fmifoundation.org.